The Excess Boys Return

Each year, some might say, it becomes more difficult to shoe-horn the Excess-Team into the back of the 17 year old Land Rover Defender. At a rough estimate their combined weight now adds up to well over a metric ton. [Not including all the skiing paraphernalia.] The whole circus is rather like watching a badly choreographed group of deep sea divers trying to break the world record for how many of them they could cram into a car. Anyway,I scooped them up from La Couronne Hotel in Argentiere. I decided that with an indifferent weather forecast that we should head through to Courmayeur where we could ski on snow that didn't resemble concrete like it did on Les Grands Montet . In the morning we skied the Youla Couloir which was a million times better than this photo suggests.

In the afternoon we found some exceptionally good skiing through through the trees. The Excess Boys were not excessive on their last night in the resort. This might have had something to do with the fact that the iconic Savoy Bar in Argentiere has closed down and no other establishment would seemingly allow them to dance on the tables. The up shot of this was that they were fresher than in previous years [last year being a particularly good example of not being "fresh".] So on the Sunday we headed up La Flegere and were skiing empty groomed pistes by 9.00am. We traversed over to the summit of the Brevent. The weather was beautiful. From the summit of the Brevent we worked our way along the ridge line skiing off piste through some impressive rock architecture.

Later we skinned up over the Col Cornu and around to the Lac Noir where we had a picnic. After lunch we skied back down to the Col de la Gliere. The first bit was steep and then it opened out into the Combe de la Gliere , eventually joining the combe Lachenal and then the piste.